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Virginia Republican Chief Compares Obama To Osama Bin Laden

October 13th, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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Anyone who has watched this campaign has known this was coming. And despite reports over the weekend that Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is going to “reboot” his campaign and decrease inflammatory rhetoric, these comments by a Virginia GOP chief comparing Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and the McCain campaign’s use of the controversy to raise the Ayers issue suggest that the fundamentals of McCain’s campaign have not changed:

The chairman of the Virginia Republican Party has compared Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden because of the Illinois senator’s past association with Bill Ayers, who has confessed to domestic bombings as a member of the Vietnam War-era Weather Underground.

Virginia Democrats, and some Republicans, are outraged, saying these are the latest in a series of inflammatory statements that the GOP has made against Obama in Virginia, a state that has emerged as a crucial battleground in the election.

Note that some Republicans are outraged as well. If this kind of rhetoric is allowed to continue it’s not much of a stretch to imagine some deranged person out there feeling they need to save the Republic. What could be worse than associating Obama with bin Laden? Note the McCain campaign’s denunciation of the comments which are undercut by a comment suggesting that Obama is an enabler and/or fellow traveler of terrorists:

According to a report in this week’s Time magazine, the Virginia party chairman, Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick (R-Prince William), told Virginia volunteers working for GOP nominee John McCain that Obama and bin Laden “both have friends that bombed the Pentagon.”

“That is scary,” Frederick said while providing talking points to GOP volunteers in western Prince William County as they prepared for a door-to-door canvass.

Several McCain surrogates have blasted Obama for his association with Ayers, but few, if any, have invoked bin Laden.

Yesterday, Frederick said he stood by the comparison, even though bin Laden planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon that killed 184 people and Obama was a child and hadn’t met Ayers when the Weather Underground planted a bomb at the Pentagon in 1972. No one was hurt in that blast, in which a bomb exploded in a restroom and caused flooding and damage to computer tapes containing classified information. Ayers did not participate in the bombing at the Pentagon but admitted to involvement in other blasts…

….Gail Gitcho, a McCain spokeswoman, also denounced Frederick’s remarks, calling them “not appropriate.”

“While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made,” Gitcho said.

The McCain campaign is still doing the image link: Obama-terrorist-associated-with. They don’t mention bin Laden but, if people draw their own inferences…

McCain will reportedly present a new economic plan today and news reports will likely use the narrative that he’s returning to issues on the stump and at the debate. But while Obama is still being portrayed as being the best bud of terrorists, the McCain campaign will essentially remain a practitioner of a modern form of McCarthyism. And what does that portend for the style of a McCain White House in an era when Americans need to be brought together?

UPDATE: An opposing view: Mark Levin argues that Obama’s associations do matter.



This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Osama bin Laden, Negative Campaigning, Virginia, Demonization, Al Qaeda, Terrorism, Democrats, 2008 Elections, Republicans, Barack Obama, John McCain, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 13 Comments

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    The article is incorrect in stating that Vringia is a battleground state. Virginia is a safe state for Democrats now due to inmigration from northerns seeking better economic opprotunities and from the stupidity of the Virginia Repulbican Party. The next question is when will all of the transplants want to start recreating Maryland or New Jersey in Virginia. with bigger state government, higher taxes, and more social services.
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    In follow up interviews he is completely unrepentant about it, too.
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    Honorable men ?
    If you recall the congressional testimony during Oliver North Iran Contra hearings, one thing that conspicuously stood out was so many Republican "character witnesses" incessantly referring to North as an "honorable man." Yesterday it was widely reported that John McCain stood up for Barrack Obama in like manner when some woman at one of his rallies assailed Obama as an "Arab." McCain, pulling the microphone from her hands, declaimed that Obama was an honorable man, or some words to that effect. Well now, it seems that the old saw "it takes one to know one" perfectly applies in this case. McCain, after all, dumped his ailing crippled wife for a young beer heiress and then went on to choose a ex-beauty pageant Governor as his running mate. Why wouldn't such a man admire how Obama parlayed his many years long connections with the Ayers family into a successful run for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, all the while keeping it at arms length. What was it that Roosevelt said about Joe Kennedy?
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    Witness the death throes of the GOP- they're all basically acting like employees on their last day, firing off self destructive bottle rockets and petty parting shots.

    Dignity? Integrity? In short supply with the GOP.
    sad, just sad it has come down to this.
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    This is little different than the scummy things some Democrats have been saying about McCain and Palin (more frequent and often much worse behavior, in fact).

    So be it. As with the economy, wherewith I am accepting of and resigned already to a recession and even our own version of 1990s-Japanese deflation from a change in public mood as well as household financial situations (an end to credit card debt that has continued to support household discretionary and essential spending to this day), I pretty much see Obama's election as accomplished fact given where we are in the election now (the end game, truly) and how plodding McCain has been and how dysfunctional the GOP has been. Any resentment and any Democratic-style demagoguery and slander will not change the outcome this late in the "game."

    Super D: "Northern Virginia" (southern DC metro located in Virginia, but far from that state's conservative and Religious Right stereotype much of the time -- a place where cars have rainbow steering wheel covers and such, the antithesis of the Religious Right stereotype, in fact) is simply growing so much it is starting to dominate Virginia politics, and will only do so more as Washington grows that much greater under an Obama pro-Democratic administration.
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    Remember November: You have yet to see the _real_ resentment, which has been placed aside temporarily in an uncomfortable coalition among the anti-Democrats in the GOP who want anything or anybody (even McCain) with an R on him or her to retain control of the executive branch. This coalition will instantly collapse with McCain's concession speech, and the (true) bitterness and mutual recriminations will only _then_ begin. The _real_ entertainment has yet to happen. You must wait one more month.
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    sad, really- because in the end it means that America will shift fully left without a nice pit stop in the middle- we need both wings for this bird to fly!!!! Perhaps from the ashes something better will arise. Something saner, less vitriolic, less fearful and paranoid. It's like the kid on one end of the see-saw that jumps off- hopefully the one still sitting will be ready to put their feet down and brake rather than get butt-smacked.



    Otherwise it will be Mourning in America, most likely.
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    DLS- At least no one has compared them to Bin Laden!

    Kerry lost because he wouldn't fight back. Should Obama do the same?
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    Kerry didn't lose because he wouldn't fight back. He lost because he had no broad appeal and nothing positive to offer in place of Bush.

    Obama's not Kerry in this analogy, but McCain might be if he doesn't get on a positive overarching narrative, quickly.
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